Strange Pathways
by Blood-Hawk-531
Summary: Okay, so I was just minding my own business, right? Next thing I know, I get zapped by this weird... thing, and catapulted into a whole alternate reality. That was just the start of my day.  SI, first ME fic.  Needs more love.  Read and review!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Alright folks, here's my contribution to the Mass Effect self-insert community. Let me clear some things up: Firstly, any and all people who like to leave flames can go jump in a lake. I would prefer constructive criticism, and if you don't like the story, no one is forcing you to read it. Also, I apologize if anyone in the story is out of character. If they are, tell me and I'll try to fix it.**

**Strange Pathways**

**Chapter 1**

"Julian," came my dad's voice, jolting me out of sleep. "Time to get up for school!" My eyes cracked open, and I groaned inwardly before answering.

"Coming!" I answered, yelling to make sure I'm heard. I swung myself out of bed and rubbed my face. For some odd reason, I felt like shit; as if I had just pulled an all-nighter reading fan-fiction or playing video games or something like that, which was really weirding me out, considering that that wasn't something I did, especially not on a school night. That wasn't the only thing either; I also had this strange indescribable feeling that something was just not _right._

Staggering to the upstairs bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. I _looked _like shit too. My blond hair stuck out in several directions at once, and my grey eyes had dark circles below them underneath my glasses.

After my morning shower, I changed into clean clothes and went for breakfast, still feeling weird. "Morning," I greeted my dad. He said the same back to me.

...

The rest of the morning went as it always did: I ate, made my lunch, made my autistic younger brother get up (as usual, he had fallen back to sleep after being called, brushed my teeth, and read fan-fiction until it was time to go out and wait for the bus to arrive.

School went as usual. I coasted through English, Social and the first half of Math, ate lunch and talked with my friends, twiddled my thumbs through the rest of Math, continued working on the painting I had started on the wall in the Art classroom, ran out of green paint for said painting, talked with my friends some more as I waited for the end-of-school bell, got on the bus, and left. Throughout the day, I still had the niggling feeling in the back of my mind that something was wrong, or like I was being watched.

Once I got home, I went out to chop wood. I don't know why I do it; we have a nice large stack of firewood already, and we can't really use the woodstove in the spring and summer anyway. I guess it helped me clear my head. I focused entirely on the dull thunks of the axe hitting the logs I was splitting, and the rhythmic swinging as I cut into the wood.

I was going back to the pile of uncut logs to get another piece to split, and I noticed something odd when I picked up a log. A metal sphere, about the size of a soccer ball, peeked out from under the pile, where I had removed the log. What the hell?

I leaned the axe against the stump I had been using as a chopping block, dropped the log with it, and reached out a hand tentatively to touch the sphere.

The surface looked like liquefied steel, and it pulsed when I picked it out of the woodpile, causing me to jump back. Then a faint green glow began to emit from the sphere, along with a low hum. Oh shit, that can't be good.

Several tendrils of green energy lanced out from the sphere and enveloped me. Feeling a tingling sensation in my arm, I held up a hand to look at it, feeling horror as I saw the green energy seeming to dissolve it or something. I saw my hand becoming less and less solid, like I was turning into a ghost. Looking down, I saw the same thing happening all over my body through the green haze. As my sight began rapidly fading, I saw a tall figure in black, futuristic armor come out of nowhere and pick up the sphere. My vision went dark.

What the fuck is going on?

...

"-ey! Hey, you alright?" A hand touched my shoulder and lightly shook me.

My eyes slitted open briefly, then screwed back up at a bright light. My parents didn't wake me up like that . . .

Suddenly, everything rushed back to me, and I sat bolt upright from where I had been laying, eyes opening wide. I immediately felt nauseous, but the feeling passed. What the fuck happened? I was in my yard, chopping wood, when I found some metal sphere that hit with me with some sort of energy and did something to me. And where am I? This isn't home, and it doesn't look like any place I've been to.

A hand came to rest on my shoulder, and a strangely familiar flanging voice asked, "You okay? You've been unconscious for a few minutes. A pedestrian saw you and called for help." I looked over in the direction of the voice, and jolted back. There was a frigging Turian from Mass Effect crouching next to me! And it wasn't just any Turian. I recognized that blue facepaint and eyepiece. It was Garrus!

. . . Okay, this is seriously fucked up. Wicked cool, but fucked up.

"Whoa, there. You shouldn't move around too much; you could hurt yourself." Garrus cautioned.

I nodded slowly. "Where- where am I?" I rasped, my voice hoarse and throat dry.

Garrus seemed to look oddly perplexed, but I wasn't sure. "The Citadel, of course," he answered slowly. "The Presidium, to be specific." He looked hard at me; I felt like a mouse being stared down by a hawk. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I lied. "I was just a bit disoriented, that's all." I debated asking him the year, but did not want to seem any more weird than I probably already did.

"Okay," Garrus said. He didn't look convinced, but seemed to let it go. "Take care of yourself." And with that he started walking away. Turning back for a moment, he added, "If you feel you need something, just come up to C-Sec and ask for Officer Vakarian."

"That's you?" I asked, playing dumb.

"Yeah," Garrus answered. "Stay out of trouble." he said, then walked off.

I sat there for a few minutes and thought. Okay, I'm in the Mass Effect universe. I know that I'm on the Citadel, but I don't know what year it is. The first Mass Effect game is set in 2183, so I should probably figure out whether it's before, during, or after those events. The best way to do so would probably be to go talk to Avina, so I should look for a terminal, over... there!

I got up and walked over to the Avina terminal, and activated it. The vaguely creepy Cortana-ish hologram popped up.

"Greetings and welcome to the Presidium. My name is Avina, and I am pleased to be your virtual guide throughout this level of the Citadel space station." she/it greeted me. Oh god, I hate this VI already . . .

"What's the date?" I ask, cutting to the chase. "In Earth time, please."

"It is June 14th, 2178 in Earth time."

. . . Fuck. So not only am I somehow in the Mass Effect universe, where there are homicidal machines that want to grind us up into paste to make more of themselves, I got here 5 years early. Great, now I have to survive for 5 freaking years before I even have a chance at helping Shepard out. Fuck my life.

I walked away from the Avina terminal and toward . . . actually, I didn't really know where I was going, and didn't really care. I got into an elevator. Maybe I'd just wander aimlessly for a while, see the sights. It's not like you ever really saw much of the Citadel in the games.

...

A frustratingly long elevator ride and some more wandering later, I found myself in a pretty much deserted neighborhood. There wasn't anyone around, which was weird considering how many people there were in other places. I found myself idly wondering how many Quarians the Migrant Fleet would be able to pack in this place. Probably a few hundred, maybe more.

A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye interrupted my musing. I spun around to look where I had seen the movement, but there was nothing there. Or was there? I spotted what looked like... was that the barrel of a rifle?

. . . Aw, hell n-

A stinging pain in the side of my neck cut me off. I pawed at my neck, and feeling a cylindrical object, pulled it out and looked at it. It was a dart. I threw the dart away, vision already swimming, and then my knees gave out. I collapsed on the ground, feeling really, really tired.

My last thoughts before blacking out were simple: What the _fuck_?

**A/N: So, first chapter is finished, do tell me what you all think of it. No flames please, or I shall be forced to come after you with some implement of killing with lots of blades and pointy bits. Ciao!**


	2. Chapter 2

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**REVIEW RESPONSES: **

"**Reema" - Thank you. I will try to do that.**

**JustAFerret - Thanks mate.**

**HBHound - Don't want spoilers, don't read. **

**Mac-2-Da-G - *Evil grin* You'll see.**

**TemptingEternity13 - We'll see about that.**

"**BrintonTwinz" - I didn't mention you because I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing introductions.**

**repeat16 - Thanks.**

**A/N: Only four reviews? I'm shocked! Surely you guys can do better than that! Anyway, here's chapter 2. Enjoy!**

Slowly, my vision came back, though my sight was still swimming. I groaned and tried to sit up, but I couldn't do it, and not from weakness or anything like that. I looked down. There were some kind of restraints holding my arms and legs down, pinning me to what seemed to be an operating table. There were cords and leads trailing from my arms and chest to some point behind my head, and I could hear the beeping of an EKG. I also seemed to be wearing some kind of gay-looking space-age medical gown. I wasn't sure, though, because my glasses were missing. Everything was blurry as hell.

What the fuck is going on here? How did I get here? Last I remember, I was on the Citadel, and- Oh, right. I got hit with a dart, and... Fuck! I can't remember anything after that. Must've been some sort of tranq. But who the hell would want to tranq me? I haven't been in this universe long enough to piss anybody off enough for anything like this.

In the midst of my struggling against the restraints and internal ranting, two figures walked in. One of them was talking to the other. I strained to hear.

"-don't know where you found him, but I'm glad you did! This subject is at blank slate, so he'll be perfect for the project. Even with all those genetic defects, he's a goldmine of possibilities for experimentation!" the figure said to the second one. His voice was grating on my ears, almost as annoying as fingernails on a chalkboard.

Oh, fuck me. That doesn't sound good. Fuck my life . . .

"Glad to help." the second figure said. It seemed like he was about to say more, but I cut him off.

"Hey! Jackasses!" I yelled.

"Ah, you're awake," the first figure said. Oh god, that sounded ominous. The figure walked over next to the table I was strapped to. "That means we can begin." The man looked back over his shoulder. "Atkinson, would you mind helping me strap him in further for the procedure?"

Oh no. No. This is NOT happening.

"Fuck you," I spat, as the second guy came over to hold me down, "Go to hell."

"My, my, such spirit," the man said with an annoyingly smug smile. Now, if only he was closer and my arm was free, so I could punch him . . . but at the same time I was scared shitless by him.

"It seems we shall have to break you down a little, but you will make a wonderful prototype for Project Ares."

I swallowed hard. That did not sound good. At all.

"Who the fuck are you?" I managed to ask, not even bothering with struggling any more, just flinching at the feel of cold metal being clamped over my forehead, holding my head in place over the table. A bunch of metal pincers were and painfully dragged and held my eyelids open.

"That's not important," the man said with an air of superiority. "Nor is the location where

we are, or anything like that. All you need to know is that you are going to be _very _useful for helping Humanity to achieve to our rightful place in the galaxy."

Aw, shit. "Fucking hell," I said. "You're Cerberus. In that case, you can go fuck yourself. No way am I helping a god damn human supremacist organization." I remembered Cerberus from the games. That was some bad stuff they got into. Especially Overlord . . .

"Well, my dear boy-" the man started, before I cut him off.

"Don't patronize me, ass-wipe." I interrupted, glaring at him. His eyes narrowed, as far as I could tell with my blurry vision. Aww, did I hurt your feelings? Well, too bad, fucker.

"As I was going to say," he growled, "You don't really have a choice." He gestured at the other man, who was behind me somewhere. "Atkinson, give him the anesthesia. Muscle relaxant too. Not much,just enough that he can't move and doesn't scream too loudly." He picked up some rather indistinct surgical tools from a tray next to the operating table.

"Anesthesia and muscle relaxant should be kicking now," the second man, Atkinson I think his name was. Actually, I am feeling a little woozy . . .

"Good," -The first man again- "That means we can begin." An indistinct group of objects on the ceiling came to life and lowered close enough to be identified as robotic arms, presumably operated by someone in a different room.

"Fuck you, you frigging xenophobic bastard," I snarled with as little of a slur as I could manage, doing my best to not show how utterly and completely terrified I was. "I hope you die horribly and burn in hell 'till the end of time, and-" I didn't get to finish that sentence before blinding pain ripped through me. Everything became indistinct; vision tunneled; I could barely hear anything, was barely aware that I was screaming.

! God in the name all that is holy make it fucking STOP!

Soon, mercifully, everything faded to black, and I fell into the void of unconsciousness.

...

When I came to, the only thing I could see was black. Something was covering my face. I thrashed around in my restraints, trying to get whatever it was off my face.

"If you want to shake that off and likely go blind," came a female voice, "by all means, keep struggling." I instantly stopped. "Good, you've stopped." the voice said again.

"What do you want with me?" I was feeling hopeless and defeated. Cerberus had me, and now I was going to be used for some sick experiment. I didn't ask for this shit!

"You are going to be the prototype for Project Ares." Gee, way to be informative there.

"I've already been told that. Now, mind telling me what that means?"

"Fine," the voice sounded exasperated. "Project Ares is, basically, designed to create the perfect soldier. Stronger, faster, and better than normal humans."

". . . basically a super-soldier. Fuck."

"Why so ungrateful? This is a great opportunity for you to help Humanity achieve our proper place in this galaxy." Genuinely curious sounding, like she actually believed what she was saying.

I laughed; it was hollow, bitter, and completely lacking in any sort of humour. "Not from my perspective. I was drugged, brought to . . . wherever I am now, and restrained and tortured. Forgive me for not jumping at the 'opportunity,' as you call it. None of this is really helping my view of Cerberus, or humans in general."

"No loyalty to your own species?"

I laughed again. "I lost what little faith I had in humanity when you fuckers tortured me. In my opinion, Humanity is loaded to the brim with entitled pricks, xenophobes, and all-around assholes, and doesn't deserve to lord it over all the other species in the galaxy. Don't try to deny it; that's what Cerberus' goal is, whatever you might think otherwise."

I didn't even give her a chance to protest. "Just leave," I said. "Oh, and in case you had any delusions about this, I would die before I joined Cerberus willingly. I won't let you use me as a weapon to kill aliens. There are a lot them that are better people than humans themselves."

"Humans found the Prothean data-cache on-" she attempted to rally a defense.

"Yeah, us and every other race in the galaxy except the Krogan. So we found some Prothean data on using mass effect tech, big fucking whup. Go away, and tell your boss from me to go fuck himself."

I heard the sound of a chair being pushed back, and a door opening and closing.

So now I am stuck God knows where, for God knows how long, and am going to be experimented on to make me into some living weapon to kill aliens for a megalomaniacal human supremacist organization. And to top it all off, I can't see anything. Great. Just _fucking _fantastic.

Fuck. My. Life.

**A/N: I apologize for being so vague about what that Cerberus guy did, but the idea was to give you an idea of how fucked up he is, to perform unnecessary surgery with basically no anesthesia on a teenager who lipped him off, just to break him down. And for those of you who think the Cerberus guy is one-dimensional and cliche (I know you guys are out there), the point was to make him that way. Anyway, review! They keep authors like myself well-fed, and taste like chicken!**


	3. Chapter 3

**DiSCLAIMER: I don't own Mass Effect, Bioware, or any canon characters contained therein. I do, however, own my self-insert and the idea for Project Ares.**

**REVIEW RESPONSES:**

**JustAFerret - That won't happen. Garrus isn't Space Batman yet, so no rescues for me. :( However, that won't be necessary. *Smirks***

**Sleepy-G - Reviews taste like chicken because I say so, and since I am the writer of this fanfic . . . *waves writing utensil in a vaguely threatening way* Also, I would say Cerberus is more like the Taliban than the Al-Qaeda (don't ask why, I don't really know, I just felt like being contrary). And how did you guess what I was going to do? OMG, psychic!**

**TemptingEternity13 – Why, thank you.**

**Reema – Oh we will.**

**ArchShadow24 – The name-dropping will happen, but not for a while. And yes, he will. **

**A/N: Okay, y'all, here's chapter 3. As an important note, there is a HUGE timeskip between last chapter and this one, for reasons of my own.**

**CHAPTER 3**

I don't even know how fucking long I've been here; wherever the hell this is. I've been poked, prodded, injected with chemicals, operated on with only enough anesthesia to keep me unable to move, subjected to psychological and mental torture in an attempt to break me down, and a load of other shit I don't even care to think about.

Every time I woke up, it was the same goddamn thing. I would get hit with some sort of gas that would make it really fucking hard for me to think straight, at which point I would get pulled out of my boring-ass cell, dragged to a lab with bright lights that hurt my eyes, strapped to an operating table, and then . . . well, I had no fucking idea what happened then, because I would get knocked out and wake up some time later back in my cell, where I would then twiddle my thumbs for hours on end while plotting the deaths of every single member of Cerberus I saw that time.

There were a few silver linings; I didn't need my glasses anymore, I was in insanely good shape, and I grew something like a foot in height. As well, my memory had gotten amazingly good, and almost photographic; one of the things Cerberus did to me was make me learn, by force, how to use, take apart and clean various types of weapons, the best ways to kill every single major race including other humans, and other, more unpleasant things, and I could remember every single detail perfectly. Regardless, I was still stuck as a lab rat for a fucking terrorist organization.

Every now and then, usually after being operated on, I would get forced through obstacle courses and other shit, probably to test whatever the hell they were putting in me. They had a metal collar around my neck that would shock me if I didn't do what they wanted me to do. Or if I went too slow, or if I talked back to them or even talked at all. They shocked me if I even stuck my tongue out in their direction. They underestimated me; something that happened because of the hell they put me through was that my pain tolerance went through the roof. The last time they tried putting me through the tests, I was able to resist and fight through the pain long enough to actually rip the collar off. Though after that, I got gassed and tortured for an extra-long period for my efforts.

They tried to get me to join Cerberus willingly. Morons left me unrestrained while the guy giving the spiel about "loyalty to my race" was there. I nearly strangled him to death before they managed to sedate me again. They tried other methods; none of them worked. After that, they tried to break me, then plant suggestions in my head to make me blindly loyal to them; that didn't work either, but I will _never _forget what they did to me, and I will never forget the ones responsible.

They better pray to whatever gods they believe in that I don't break out of this place; if I do, they will be the ones to die first, and it will not be pleasant for them.

...

After waking up after yet another invasive-yet-unremembered surgery, I saw that I was still in the lab. Oh joy, now I can get put through exhausting physical testing or be tortured for the umpteenth time.

Accompanying my return to consciousness was a feeling of nausea and a splitting headache. What the fuck? I never felt sick before when I woke up. I brought an arm up over my face to block out the light, and- wait, what the hell? Why wasn't I restrained? All the other times, Cerberus _always _had me tied down securely.

The second thing I noticed was that my arm was covered in armour of some sort. My forearm was encased in two smooth, curved metal plates that wrapped all around my forearm and fitted together with barely a gap between them. A single plate covered the back of my wrist and hand. Segmented metal pieces were protecting each finger, the pieces on the last joints of each tapering to dull points reminiscent of claws, but not large or long enough to obstruct my ability to grip or to use as weapons. Dull grey material that on close inspection looked like tiny interlocking scales covered my palms, the inside of my wrists, and any places not protected by armour plating, as well as covering my entire neck and coming up over my head in a sort of close-fitting hood. The armour extended up my arm and covered pretty much my entire body, as far as I could tell, and was coloured a dull silver-grey, with an orange stripe bracketed by black running along the length of my arm and down the centre of my chestplate. Cerberus colours.

Okay, I am kinda freaking out now. What. The fuck. Is going on.

I sat up, and as I did so, noticed Captain Bastard himself leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, reading off a datapad. He looked up. "Ah," he said. "You're awake."

"Oh, fuck you." I growled, feeling another wave of nausea. "Urgh..." I groaned. "If I didn't feel like shit, I would come over there and kill you."

"Oh really?" He smirked and held up what looked like a handle with a button on one end. He pressed the button, and suddenly a sharp wave of pain ripped through me.

It felt like my nerves were on _fire. _It went on for only a few seconds, but it was enough to make me collapse off the table and onto the floor from how much I was writhing.

Once the pain shut off, I glared shakily at the man. "What . . . the fuck." I groaned, muscles still spasming.

"That was the control chip we put in your head just a little while ago," he said, smirking. "I'm _very _pleased to see that it works. Of course, we'll have to perform more tests to be sure of the effectiveness, just to be sure." Oh, you smug bastard. You have no idea how cathartic it is going to be for me to kill you.

I rose shakily, grabbing the edge of the operating table to pull my self up. I noticed dully that my grip was actually crushing and deforming the edge of the table. Once back on my feet, I glared at the man with death in my eyes.

"You son of a bitch," I snarled. "I'm going to murder you, and dance on your grave."

Another wave of pain, not as bad as the last time, as I knew what to expect, but still enough to drive me to my knees. As the pain receded, the man, smirk turning malicious, said, "Now, if you're quite finished, there are tests to run. Or would you prefer I just use the chip on you until it fries half of your brain? I assure you, we have no real need for your higher mental functions; in fact, that would do wonders for making you more obedient."

I gritted my teeth. "Fine," I forced out, before adding one last insult under my breath, "Fucker."

The man seemed to smile even wider, if that was even possible. He poked his thumb in the direction of another table, where a there lay a helmet, coloured grey, black, and orange like the armour I was wearing. "Go put that on, and then we can go to the testing area."

I growled slightly, but managed to walk, albeit a little unsteadily, over to the helmet. Picking it up, I noticed that the opening at the bottom was too small to fit my head into. A plate was covering what I guessed to be the area where I guessed the underside of a person's jaw would be.

"Hey," I demanded, "How the hell do I put this thing on?"

"There's a button on the left side of the jaw area." the man said. "Push it."

I flipped the helmet so I could see where the button was, located it, and pushed it. The entire chin and jaw area of the helmet slid forward, uncovering the rest of the opening and allowing me to fit my head inside. It was a snug fit, but not at all uncomfortable. Right after I got the helmet on, the chin piece locked back in place. I started freaking out a little, as the helmet was stuffy inside and I couldn't get any air, before a sort of hissing click sounded, and the interior of the helmet immediately cooled down and I could breath again. I noticed some text pop up in the upper-right-hand corner of my vision. Vision being a relative term, as all I could see was black.

**Vacuum seal enabled, **it read. **Seal strength: 100%. Full environmental hard-seal.**

Then more text came up, turning into a short list of what seemed to be diagnostics or something. The first line read:

**Interfacing with combat hard-suit . . . Interfacing successful. HUD online.**

Suddenly, my vision field flared to life. The interior of the helmet had been black before, but now it had changed to a view of the room that was so clear that if there weren't readouts and other stuff along the edges of my vision, I wouldn't have known I was wearing a helmet at all. There was what seemed to be a radar scanner in the lower left-hand corner of my vision field and a blue bar along the top, along with the text in the top right corner. As I looked at the man, a very small, almost unnoticeable reticule popped up and centered itself on his face. Then it disappeared, and text popped up in the bottom right of my vision field, reading:

**Species: Human**

**Gender: Male**

**Condition: Uninjured**

**Status: Calm, unarmed**

**Threat Level: Minimal**

. . . Okay, that is REALLY cool. A little bit distracting, but cool. The text disappeared after a second.

"Is everything working?" the man asked.

I shrugged. "I gue- Wait, what the shit?" My voice through the helmet was distorted into a menacing, digitized, raspy tone. "What is up with my voice in this thing?"

"Voice scrambler," he answered. "So you can't be identified. Not that it would matter; according to records, you don't exist anyway.

"Now, does your radar work?" I looked at it. It looked almost exactly like the radar from Halo, and there was a white dot being shown on it that looked like it represented him, based on its position.

"I think so," I answered uncertainly. "There's a white dot on it."

"That would be me," he said curtly. "White is neutral or unknown, green is friendly, red is known hostiles. The blue dot in the centre is you."

Well, that's handy.

"There's a blue bar at the top of my HUD," I commented. "What is it?"

"Shield indicator. How full it is shows how much damage your shields can take." He turned and gestured for me to follow him. "Follow me."

"Like I have a choice," I muttered, shooting him a death glare, but I followed him.

We soon reached another room. It was large, way too-brightly lit, and completely empty except for a large number of closed hatches of varying sizes on the walls or in the floor. Oh joy, it's the examination room. Well, this is just bloody fantastic; what the hell am I going to have to do now?

I looked at Captain Bastard, wondering what the hell he was up to, but he just smirked from where he stood, behind a transparent window of some kind, next to another man sitting at a computer console.

"Begin the test." he said to the other man, who nodded and tapped something on the console. One of the hatches opened up, and from the shadowed corridor behind it, there were the sounds of whirring and heavy footsteps.

I gulped. I had a really bad feeling about this.

...

I groaned, picking myself up off the floor. That bastard decided to test my armour's capabilities, namely the shields, by setting a bloody fucking YMIR mech on me. Of course, it wasn't with live ammo; no, instead they loaded it with rubber rounds which, by the way, hurt like a motherfucker, especially when you get hit with one half the size of your head that's being used as a dummy missile. And I thought YMIRs were a pain in the ass in the game.

What's worse, Captain Bastard and his minion let the mech shoot me even after it took out my shields. I wasn't exactly certain how long it was before they called it off; things got kind of fuzzy after I got whaled by the second dummy missile.

What did surprise me was how little injury I received and how fast I recovered. I would've expected to at least have broken ribs from the pounding I received, but no; I was likely bruised from head to toe from all the hits, but within a minute the pain faded from excruciating to almost nothing and I was able to get up.

The first thing I noticed was that there was someone new in the room. Captain Bastard's minion had left, but there was an asari wearing handcuffs and some kind of collar slumped on the floor with him standing over her holding a collapsed pistol. He threw it in my direction. It landed on the floor a foot in front of me and slid the rest of the way to hit my boot.

"The hell is this for?" I asked, kneeling to pick it up. I hit the deploy button, looked at the gun, and then at the asari on the floor. She looked young by human standards, even though she was probably old enough to be my grandmother in human years, and there were tear tracks running down her face, which had several large, deep purple bruises. Sobs racked her body, and her back hitched irregularly from her ragged breathing.

"That is for another test." Captain Bastard said.

My eyes narrowed. There was something bad going on here.

"And that would be?" I growled. This fucker was pissing me off.

"We're seeing just how effectively a control chip can be used to, shall we say, _overcome _a person's reluctance towards certain actions they normally would not do, as well as testing out the punishment and reward system we have laid out."

I looked at the pistol again, and I got a chill as I realized what he meant. I remembered something Jack said in ME2: _"I got shocked if I hesitated. Narcotics flooded my veins when I attacked."_

Dear God. They want me kill this asari, and they're going to use the control chip to start conditioning me to kill aliens.

"Burn in hell." I spat, then put the pistol barrel up under my chin, ready to shoot myself. "I'll blow my own brains out before I kill her, so FUCK YOU!"

"Wrong answer." He pulled out the control chip's trigger and hit the button.

The pain drove me to my knees, but I was able to keep a grip on the pistol. The only thing going through my mind was making the pain stop. I opened my eyes, forcing through the involuntary blurring and tunneling of my sight to look up at _him, _the source of my agony. Muscles spasming wildly, I raised the pistol in my clenched fist. My finger found the trigger and pulled, repeatedly, until it overheated and clicked.

The pain suddenly gone, I dropped the overheated pistol and collapsed to the floor, sucking in deep breaths as I recovered. Once I had managed to get my breathing under control, I looked up. The asari was lying on the ground in the fetal position, arms covering her head. I hoped she was alright.

Captain Bastard, however, was lying on the floor, unmoving and leaking blood. He was still alive though; I could hear him making a wheezy gurgling noise.

I pushed myself up off the floor, picked up the pistol, and walked over to where he lay. There were two shot wounds in his lower chest that were leaking small streams of blood, but the one that took the cake was up higher; I had managed to shoot him directly in the throat, and he was choking on his own blood as he tried to breathe through what was left of his windpipe.

Leaning over him, I looked him in the eye and whispered, "Say hello to the devil for me." I pointed the pistol in his face and pulled the trigger. The bullet left a neat red hole right between his eyes, but the floor was splattered with gore, which sprayed for a foot along the floor in all directions from the exit wound.

I looked numbly down at the corpse. I had just killed a man. The man who had been in charge of experimenting on me, of torturing me, was dead. My shoulders started shaking in a combination of self-hate, disgust, and hysterical laughter.

A whimper from the asari snapped me out of it. I turned to look at her. She was looking up at me with fear in her eyes, and she was trying to scoot backward, away from me. I must've terrified her with my laughing; it probably made me sound rather unhinged.

I crouched down to her eye level. "It's alright," I said softly, or tried to. The scrambler in my helmet didn't let it sound the way I intended. I fumbled for the release button on my helmet, and pulled the helmet off.

I tried again. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said, doing my best to smile reassuringly. The asari just stared at me, but at least she wasn't trying to get away from me any more. I moved so she was in arms' reach, and reached for her wrists so I could try to get the cuffs off. She flinched, but let me work on them.

The cuffs were a pain in the ass to get off. They were too snug for me to get more than two fingers underneath each, so it took several minutes before I was able to pry them off.

"What are you doing?" the asari asked, voice hoarse.

"What does it look like?" I asked sarcastically. "I'm getting you out of here. I'm not leaving you here with these sons-of-bitches."

"Bu- but you're human, too." she said, confused.

"Just because I'm human doesn't mean I feel any sort of loyalty to these people. You have no idea of the shit they've put me through," I explained. "Put your chin up please."

She lifted her chin, giving me better access to the collar around her neck. It didn't look like the collar Cerberus used to keep me in check; it had a weird glowing blue stripe in the middle, running the circumference of the metal ring.

I rotated the collar until I could see the seam where it snapped together. Getting as good of a grip on it as I could on either side, I pulled it apart. The metal gave with a weird twanging noise. I held it up to the light. "Want a souvenir?" I asked, trying to make light of the situation.

The asari shook her head. "No thanks."

I stood up and offered a hand, which she took, and pulled her to her feet. Feeling curious, I asked, "Are you a biotic?"

She looked at me funny. "Yes. Why?"

I shrugged, picking up my helmet and pistol. "It will just make escaping here easier." I collapsed the pistol and put it on my hip, where it stuck, then put the helmet on and sealed it. I started walking toward the door, then realized I had no idea where to go.

"When they brought you here," I asked, "Did you see anything that looked like a hangar?"

She nodded. "They actually brought me through a hangar bay on my way. I can show you the way."

"Alright," I agreed. "But you should stay behind me. You don't have shields and you're the only one who knows where we're going." I pointed to the corpse. "Also, could you help me get his omnitool? I have no idea what it looks like."

We went through the hallways, me in front, pistol raised, the asari behind me occasionally giving directions. Getting her to remember the exact route to the hangar turned out to be irrelevant, as Captain Bastard's omnitool, which I gave to the asari since I had no idea how to work it.

We had also pilfered a small chip that the asari said was a credit chit. The amount on it was staggering. I'd never seen that many zeros in a money denomination before.

It was kind of eerie, how empty the corridors were. You would've expected there to at least be some people around. I was also surprised that the alarm hadn't been sounded, or something. Captain Bastard must've thought he didn't need anyone monitoring the testing room when he tried to get me to kill the asari.

Altogether, this was kind of suspicious. Either I was getting insanely lucky, or this was some kind of setup. I had a horrible, suspicious mind, so I went with the latter. This made me kind of twitchy.

"Ah!" the asari exclaimed, dodging my pistol as I swung it around to point in the direction of something I thought I heard. In a low, furious voice, she hissed, "What was that about?"

"Sorry," I apologized, "This all just seems suspicious, so I'm kinda jumpy." At that point, Cerberus had apparently found Captain Bastard's body and realized we had escaped, because the air was suddenly filled with the obnoxious caterwauling of a Klaxon.

Okay, so it's not a setup. That's comforting.

"Never mind what I said about it being suspicious," I amended, picking up the pace. "We gotta move."

Rounding the next corner, we came face-to-face with three Cerberus soldiers. One of them shouted, "It's Zero and the asari! Get them!"

"Oh shit!" I exclaimed, taking cover back around the corner and pulling the asari with me. I popped around the corner long enough to squeeze off three shots, one of which hit a soldier in the shoulder, before taking cover again as assault rifle fire smashed into the wall. I swallowed hard; I really hoped my shields were good.

"I can help," the asari said. Oh right, biotic.

"What can you do?" I asked, a feral grin spreading on my face.

"Not a whole lot," she said. I popped around the corner again and loosed off a few more shots, this time taking the time to aim and managing to nail the already-wounded soldier twice before bullets started impacting against my shields. I ducked back into cover, and she continued, "I never had commando training, so I'm not as strong a biotic as some other asari, but I could throw someone a fair distance if I needed."

I had an idea. "What about-" I started, then shot twice more around the corner. One of the bullets hit a soldier right in the neck, and he dropped like a rock. Bullseye! I cheered silently, and ducked around the corner again, where I continued what I had been saying. "What about throwing someone up, like to smash them into the ceiling or something?" I asked.

After a moment, she nodded. "I think so." she answered.

"Alright," I said. "On three, use your biotics on one of them. One . . . two . . . three!" We both popped around the corner. I squeezed the trigger as fast as I could, not even bothering to aim, just trying to keep to soldiers off-balance, while the asari glowed blue, reached out with one hand and made a motion like she was tossing a ball up. The blue aura appeared around the remaining uninjured soldier, and he suddenly rocketed upwards to collide with a sickening crunch against the ceiling. He then fell back to the ground limply, and it didn't look like he was getting up any time soon.

The other soldier, the one who I had already wounded, just stared down at the guy who had been smashed into the ceiling, and I took the opportunity to drop him with two shots to the chest. I was getting better at aiming; I wouldn't be consistently dropping people with headshots any time soon, but it was improvement.

I walked quickly over to the bodies, trying to ignore the churning in my stomach at the sight of the men I'd killed. I picked up their dropped assault rifles and offered one to the asari. She took it hesitantly, but quickly got ahold of herself and held it with much more confidence. I took the remaining two, collapsed one and put it on my back, and held the other in lieu of my pistol, which I also collapsed and put away.

We continued along the route to the hangar, only encountering one other group of soldiers, which was easy enough to kill, before reaching the door to the hangar. I ducked behind the edge of the doorway, as I saw five red dots on my radar -the armour was apparently smart enough to mark everything as hostile except for the asari- and peeked around the edge to look and see what exactly they were. I groaned inside. Apart from an assortment of crates scattered around the room -why the hell were there always convenient chest high walls all over the place? - there were also three regular soldiers, plus two who had the weird-looking holograms surrounding them that meant they had tech armor, that were all standing in front of a shuttle. Fuck.

"Three regular ones, plus two with shields." I told the asari.

She nodded, then said, "I'll get the regulars,"

"And I'll get the ones with shields." I agreed. She nodded, and we both readied our rifles.

I was first through the door, and I used the age-old strategy of wildly spraying bullets in the direction of the soldiers and screaming obscenities at them at the top of my lungs as I sprinted for the nearest cover. Most of them ducked for cover, but I killed one who was a little slower than the rest before my rifle overheated. Ducking behind the crate I had reached, I quickly swapped the overheated rifle for the collapsed one on my back.

Popping up again, I noticed the one of the two regulars picked up and bodily hurled into the other. I grinned. Biotics were awesome; I wished I could do that.

I was interrupted in my musing by an electrical crackle and my HUD flashing red. I ducked into cover and glanced at my shield indicator, which had dropped to a little over half. I raised an eyebrow; in the game, Shepard would always completely lose shields when hit with tech attacks. Those were powerful shields I had.

I came back out of cover, just as one of the tech-armoured soldiers came up to shoot at the asari, and opened fire on him with my assault rifle. This time however, I just fired in short bursts; if there was one thing I had learned from playing shooter games, it was that shooting in bursts worked a lot better than spraying and praying. The soldier's tech armour collapsed after four quick pulses of the trigger, and I held the trigger down after that to kill him as fast as possible.

The second guy came up right after the first dropped dead, and I decided to try something kind of risky. Trusting my shields to hold, I vaulted over my cover and bull-rushed the guy. The soldier seemed too shocked to do anything, right up until I bashed him in the face with my rifle. He fell to the ground clutching at his nose, and I was about to shoot him when a stream of bullets came from the side and did the job for me. I turned to see the asari pointing her assault rifle at the dead soldier.

She shrugged. "What?" she asked. She rested the rifle over her shoulder, turned, and walked toward the shuttle. She turned, adding, "You coming? I, for one want to get out of here."

Now there was something I could agree with. I followed and got in the shuttle with her. The door closed, the asari walked into the cockpit, then I felt the shudder as it lifted off. I sighed and sank onto one of the seats. I was free.

**A/N: I'm really sorry about how slow this update was. I really have no excuse beyond my own laziness. I was enjoying the fact that I was out of school and could just lie around doing nothing. I also couldn't find a good place to cut it off, so the whole thing kinda dragged on.**

**Also, sorry if the fight scene seemed sucky; I'm really much better at writing hand-to-hand combat.**

**Next chapter will probably be a while, because I promised myself I would at least try to write another chapter of Lone Wolf after this.**

**Read and review! And no flames, dammit! I haven't gotten any yet, and I plan to keep it that way.**


	4. Chapter 4

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Mass Effect.**

**REVIEW RESPONSES:**

**SIreader: Thanks for the review. Sorry, but I don't really know how you could improve your fic, apart from the fact that you don't need to always spout off the entire name of a firearm every single time, nor do you need to rattle off the design specs at all. At most, you should say the whole name once and then shorten it to something quicker. A bunch of streams of letters and numbers can get annoying in a story. Anyway, for the shortening, and example would be shortening "Sig GSR 1911 TTT" down to "Sig GSR", or simply "Sig".**

**JustAFerret: Why thank you, Ferret. **

**Chris7221: Answer to 1st review: Thank you, and this is not a parody. Answer to 2nd review: I figure, if I (or the story version of me) is screwed anyway, might as well insult them as creatively and as often as possible; just because I'm trapped doesn't mean I can't be a huge pain in the ass. Answer to 3rd review: Thank you, and there's one more addition in this chapter and story!me will be good to go.**

**A/N: Hey there, readers! Here's chapter 4 for your reading enjoyment!**

**CHAPTER 4**

I sat on the bench in the shuttle. I was free. Free of those fucking Cerberus lunatics. Free to do . . . well, whatever I want really. The amount of credits on Captain Bastard's credit chit is enough that I could probably buy my own ship if I wanted to. He must have been really well paid. Either that, or Cerberus had me captive for a pretty long while. Maybe both. I clenched my gauntleted hands, which were speckled with Captain Bastard's blood from when I searched his body for valuable crap I could steal. Maybe I'll go back to that facility and destroy it like Jack did in ME2 with the Teltin facility.

Speaking of which, where the hell _am_ I anyway? I should probably find that out. Maybe I'll ask the asari, I'm sure there's a navigation computer or something in the cockpit.

I got up from my seat and went to the entrance to the cockpit. Weirdly enough, it looks a bit like Joker's station in the Normandy's cockpit, except the seat looks different. And it's probably not leather.

"Hey," I said to the asari, who squeaked and jumped. Apparently I scared her, or someth- oh, wait, the voice distortion.

"Sorry about that," I apologized, and took off my helmet. "It's the voice distortion, isn't it?"

The asari nodded. "That and your helmet design. Not the best thing to wear if you don't want to scare someone."

I spun the helmet around in my grip and looked at it properly for the first time. It actually looked fairly similar to the helmet off of the Collector armour that you could get in ME2, except it didn't have the huge mandible-things all over the place, the eyepieces were bigger and coloured blood-red, and the surface was plain steel-gray metal rather than looking like a Collector exoskeleton.

All in all, it was a fairly intimidating looking helmet.

"Sorry about that," I said, "That was probably the idea when the armour was designed. Bit of psychological warfare or some crap like that, probably."

The asari nodded in agreement. Then I added, "By the way, we never really got to make introductions. I'm Julian." I held out my hand to shake.

"Shara," she responded, tentatively accepting my outstretched gauntlet and giving it a small shake. Her hand looked tiny in mine. "Nice to meet you, I guess.

"Anyway, was there something you needed?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah," I answered, nodding, "Could you tell me where we are and possibly what year it is?"

She turned back to the console. "Give me a moment," she said over her shoulder. A moment later, she spoke again. "We just got out of orbit of a dwarf planet called Thooft. We're in the Boltzmann system . . . Serpent Nebula." she then whistled quietly. "They were hiding right under the Council's noses."

I raised an eyebrow. That's oddly convenient. Cerberus facility that's within FTL range of the Citadel?

"As for the year," Shara continued, "I have no idea myself what the human year is, but the computer says it's 2183."

My head jerked up. Holy fuck. Cerberus had me for five goddamn years. Jesus fucking Christ, this day seems to be getting longer.

". . . Fuck." was all I could manage to say. I rubbed at my forehead with one hand.

"What's wrong?" Shara asked.

"Five years." I answered. "That's how long Cerberus had me for. You saw what that asshole was doing to me with the control chip. I had to endure him torturing me on a regular basis for five years. That's what's wrong."

I got up and put my helmet back on. I calmed down as I resealed it. Despite only having the armour for a very short time, it was quickly developing into something like a security blanket for me. Probably had something to do with the fact that it fit like a second skin and was actually quite comfortable.

"Thanks, Shara," I said dully. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go . . . think. Or something."

She looked at me sadly. "I understand that you probably want to be left alone right now." she said.

I nodded. "Kinda. If you could let me know when we get to the Citadel, that'd be great. And by the way, how long should it take to get there from here?"

Shara looked back at the console for a moment. "About six hours, give or take." she answered a moment later. I nodded and ducked back out of the cockpit. So I have six hours to figure out what the hell I'm going to do. Fantastic.

I slumped back down into the seat I had previously vacated, letting out a sigh. Alright, so I am in the Mass Effect universe at large, rather than just being a lab rat for a terrorist organization's supersoldier program. I have also grown and bulked up a great deal because of said program, and given how over-the-top Cerberus goes with everything, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm on par with a Krogan, or very close to it. The best - and so far, only - plan that I currently have is helping Shepard out with the fight against the Reapers.

I sighed and dropped my head back against the wall with a clank. Helping Shepard out at this point is going to be somewhat difficult. I never played the first Mass Effect game, and while I know most of what happens in the game, first-hand experience would have been good to have. Not that I won't do my best, but still . . .

My train of thought was abruptly cut off by an electronic voice in my ear.

"_Hello, Julian."_

**A/N: Whooo, cliffhanger! I just couldn't resist. **

**Sorry about the short chapter length, but this just seemed like a good place to cut off for dramatic effect.**

**What will happen? Who, or what, is that voice? You'll have to wait for the next chapter for that, I'm afraid. :P**


	5. Chapter 5

**DISCLAIMER: (Insert witty remark about not owning Mass Effect here) **

**REVIEW RESPONSES:**

**JustAFerret - Nah, man, it's cool. Unfortunately, in regards to your guess as to the owner of the voice, no cigar for you. It isn't the Illusive Man.**

**RamenKnight - Don't like, don't read. **

"**Hopelessly Blue" - Thank you for that glowing praise.**

**repeat16 - Sorry 'bout the wait.**

**A/N: Sorry I took so long; I got lost on the road of life.**

**CHAPTER 5**

I jumped. Holy shit, what was that?

"_You should really calm down," _the voice spoke again. _"You'll cause yourself damage. You organics are so fragile."_ The voice was smooth, young-sounding, male, had a faint undertone of sarcasm and amusement, and was utterly unplaceable. It didn't sound like any person I knew or any of the characters from either Mass Effect game.

"What . . . the hell," I croaked out, finding my voice, which sounded flat and muffled, and strangely non-modulated. I realized that my helmet wasn't transmitting any sound outside of itself.

The voice made a noise that sounded like chuckling. Creepy, computerized chuckling.

"_Since the one who put me here said you would likely react like this, I suppose that's the best I'm going to get out of you. I may as well introduce myself. I am Aegis, your armour's AI. Don't worry about being overheard; I have temporarily disabled the outgoing communications systems on your helmet. We can have a nice, private talk right here in your helmet."_

An AI. Great. This is either ridiculously good luck I'm having, or really, really bad luck.

"Please tell me you don't have programming to kill me or something," I groaned.

"_Why would I want to kill you?" _Aegis asked with something that sounded like amusement. _"I was sent by my creator to help you with your mission."_

"And that is . . ." I prompted.

"_Your attempt to get more information from me is both transparent and unnecessary. Your mission is to aid Shepard in her fight against the Reapers. Your influence may help to tip the scales in a more . . . favourable direction."_

I digested everything the AI said. One detail nagged at me. "You said 'she.' Is Shepard female in this universe?"

"_That is correct. Commander Jane Shepard, the Lion of Elysium."_

Okay, that's interesting, Shepard's female. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. The female Shepard had more personality in the game anyway.

"Uh, okay. But you also said that I could . . . tip the scales. How the hell am I supposed to do that? I'm nothing special, just . . . me."

"_You are incorrect," _Aegis shot back. _"If you were 'nothing special,' the Iscarael Device would not have reacted to you. You would not be here."_

"What the hell is the Iscarael Device, and what do you mean by 'react?'" I asked.

"_For all intents and purposes, the Iscarael Device - ID for short - is a creation of the Protheans that warps space and time to act as a sort of teleporter. It was based on the idea of the Mass Relays and the Conduit. The original intent of the device was that it could be used as a new, better FTL drive for the Protheans' ships. A small-scale prototype was built and tested, but it did not work as planned. The scientists doing the testing were thrown, along with the device, into an alternate reality - your reality. Long story short, when they reactivated the device and were transported back to this reality, the program was put on hold while they studied the effects of the device. The Protheans were wiped out by the Reapers soon after that, and the location of the Iscarael Device was lost._

"_As for what I meant by the device reacting to you, the Iscarael Device_

"So this . . . Iscarael Device is basically a machine that lets you access other realities?"

"_In a nutshell, as you say, yes, though it is more complicated than that. The device uses dark energy in some manner to produce a field around itself that essentially warps space and time to bring the operator to a specified point. Theoretically, the device could be used to travel anywhere, at any point in time, in multiple realities."_

"Are you telling me," I asked slowly, "that the Protheans basically invented a TARDIS?"

"_Yes, if using outdated human popular culture as a point of reference works for you, that is an acceptable comparison."_

"Ha. Ha." I said dryly. "You're really funny, you know that?"

"_You have no idea."_

I groaned and facepalmed, gauntlet and helmet meeting with a clank. "So I got transported to this reality by what is basically a Mass Effect equivalent of the TARDIS? How does that even work?"

"_I'm afraid I cannot tell you that. I do not have the relevant data myself. In essence, your guess is as good as mine."_

I decided to change the subject. "So . . . your, uh, creator," I said carefully, not really certain of a good way to phrase the question, "They weren't, you know, part of Cerberus, were they?"

"_No. My creator hates Cerberus just as much as you do."_

I started to nod, before remembering that I was talking to an AI that was essentially just a voice in my head, and stopped. Aegis' answer had raised another question though.

"If your creator hates Cerberus, and I'm assuming that they hate him as well, how did you get in my suit?" I asked. "And how did you not get discovered?"

"_My creator is proficient enough in stealth to avoid the notice of a bunch of guards." _Aegis answered, sounding a little affronted. _"Tactical cloaks are As to how I went undetected after being planted in your suit, there was already sufficient computer architecture in place to house anything from a high-level VI to a lower-mid-level AI. Cerberus already had a VI in place to monitor and regulate suit functions; my creator simply removed the VI's processor and main memory and installed mine in place. I took over the VI's functions and simply acted like it did."_

"Okay," I blinked, a little confused. Didn't AIs need huge mainframes to run properly? EDI's core on the Normandy in ME2 was so big it filled a whole room. "How did Cerberus manage to make . . . architecture that can support an AI in such a small space?"

"_I won't bother explaining it to you; you wouldn't understand the theory or mechanics. In simple terms, the architecture is very efficient, very compact, and very expensive. Apparently, Cerberus based it off of captured Geth technology."_

Okay, that's easy enough to understand . . .

. . . Wait, what?

"How did Cerberus get their hands on Geth tech?" I demanded.

"_Apparently, they sent a small group of operatives into the Perseus Veil. They came back - with only half the operatives originally sent out returning - with several deactivated Geth and some examples of their weaponry."_

I sat quietly for a few minutes, digesting the information. Then I asked, "You said your creator sent you to 'help' me. What exactly does that entail?"

"_By 'help', I meant that I can help with the tasks you would not be able to do. I can hack computer systems faster than any non-AI. I can monitor your radar for you; be the 'eyes in the back of your head,' so to speak. Beyond that, I control the basic functions of your suit: power distribution to kinetic barriers, motors, the tactical cloak . . ."_

"Hang on," I cut in. "Did you say tactical cloak? As in, the thing that lets you turn invisible?"

"_Yes. Though the proper term for the device is 'tactical cloaking field generator.'"_

"Okay, cool. Sorry for interrupting. Please continue."

"_Very well. In addition, I monitor vital systems and make certain that they are functioning properly; for example, I make sure that the air filtration systems syphon oxygen from the air in a toxic atmosphere if they can, and if they cannot siphon oxygen out, either not at all or in insufficient quantities, I feed in oxygen from the suit's storage tanks."_

That admittedly made me a little nervous. Regardless of what Aegis said about helping me, there was still the possibility that it - or he, I supposed - could just kill me if he wanted. Or he could be fried by an electromagnetic pulse if I ever ran into one of those. Or any of a number of other things that could go badly. I was a firm believer in Murphy's Law.

"Erm, what happens if I get hit by an EMP?" I asked nervously. "You won't short-circuit and fry the life support or anything like that, will you? And what if you get hacked?"

"_Don't worry about either. The suit's systems are hardened against electromagnetic overload. And as for me being hacked, it would be nigh impossible. There is not an organic in the galaxy that would be able to get through my firewalls with a brute-force attack. The same goes for all but the most sophisticated VIs, which exist in very few numbers as they are considered for the most part to be too expensive and inconvenient to maintain. The only things truly capable of matching or overpowering my firewalls and electronic warfare countermeasures would be another AI, depending, again, on how powerful the other AI is." _ Aegis' tone seemed almost smug for a moment. _"That is not to say that I am impossible to hack, however. As such, I am constantly running hacking countermeasures during the times my attention is not required elsewhere, such as in combat." _

"Ah. Sorry, I was just worried there for a second." I said, feeling a little stupid.

"_No problem. I think that that's enough information for you to digest for now. In future, should you wish to talk to me without anyone else hearing, there is a button on a panel on your right gauntlet with a speaker on it that you can press to switch between your external and internal line. I suggest that you keep my existence secret from others, at least for the moment, and be certain that, if you do choose to tell someone, you be absolutely certain that they are trustworthy._

"_Also, I suggest you try to get some sleep on the way to the Citadel. You could use it."_

With that, there was an audible click, like someone hanging up a phone. A small alert reading **External Speakers On **popped up in the top right of my HUD. I supposed that meant that the external line was back on, along with the Darth Vader-esque voice modulator.

Popping the seal on my helmet, I removed it and set it on the bench next to me. I leaned back against the wall and tilted my head back against it as well, shutting my eyes.

I was woken rudely by a jolt of the shuttle. Blinking owlishly as my body registered the return to consciousness and banished the stupor, I stood up and staggered to the cockpit.

"Whats going on?" I asked Shara - who was _still _sitting in the pilot's chair, looking like she was exhausted, not that I could comment without being hypocritical - while desperately trying to sound at least somewhat awake and coherent.

"We just dropped out of FTL," she answered, yawning before she continued. "We're coming up on the Citadel. ETA . . ." she checked a readout, ". . . about five minutes."

I nodded, before commenting, "You look tired."

She smiled tiredly. "So do you."

I nodded again and gave a half-hearted smile back. "I know."

Trying to actually say something meaningful, I added, "Thanks for getting us here. I almost definitely never would've gotten off the station otherwise; I probably would've been back in Cerberus' custody by now. I owe you."

"No, I owe you." Shara returned. "You broke me out and saved me from being killed."

I thought of reminding her that if she had been killed in that facility, it most likely would've been me pulling the trigger, before deciding against it. It wouldn't get us anywhere and that wasn't something I wanted to remind either of us about. "Fine," I gave in, deciding to meet her halfway in this, "How about we just say that we're even. That seems simplest."

Shara nodded. Just then, a voice squawked out over the intercom/radio/whatever the hell it was.

"_This is Citadel control." _the voice - which sounded like the speaker was a Turian, given the faint flanging undertone - said in a bored tone._ "Identify."_

Shara sat up straighter, and stated very clearly, "This is Shara T'liir, diplomat. ID number-" and then she recited a fairly long string of numbers, punctuated on the end by an alien-sounding word - or words, I wasn't sure - that had a lot of vowels. Probably something in asari, but that didn't explain why it didn't translate. Unless the word didn't have a direct translation to English.

"_Code acknowledged. Proceed to Tayseri Ward Shuttle Bay."_

As the Citadel grew bigger in the window, I looked at Shara, surprised. "You're a diplomat?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I'm not very high up the chain," she answered. "The only people I negotiate with are other low-level diplomats from the other embassies. I'm hardly considered important."

There was a shudder as the shuttle came to rest. As Shara and I walked out, I retrieved my helmet and sealed it in place. Shara looked at me a little questioningly. I shrugged.

"It's just more convenient this way," I said, answering the unspoken question. "It would be awkward to carry this around everywhere, and I don't want to run the risk of leaving this behind somewhere."

We walked into a hallway that looked like the scanner room you had to pass through to get into the Citadel proper in the second game. Turned out that it was; I was rigid the whole time the scanner was passing over me, praying that I wouldn't get detained for having unregistered gene mods or some crap like that. I didn't get arrested, thank God, but the C-Sec officer operating the scanner seemed to be giving me a weird look.

I was also surprised that I wasn't accosted at the desk for, once again, not having the proper paperwork or whatever, or the pesky problem of me _not existing _in any records. Or the fact that I was carrying two assault rifles and a pistol that were almost definitely not registered, and that I was wearing armour that almost screamed 'mercenary/paramilitary.'

We walked out into the Ward. I looked around, not recognizing anything. Not surprising, considering that all I've seen of the Citadel is the little bit of the Presidium I woke up in after my little dimension-hop five years ago, plus the part of Zakera Ward you can walk around in in the second game.

"Erm," Shara started, sounding nervous, "I don't suppose you have anywhere to stay, do you?"

"No." I replied dully. "It's been five years since Cerberus captured me, and the Citadel wasn't my home anyway. I was . . . just visiting." It wasn't a lie, not really; just not the whole truth. Not that Shara would believe me if I told her anyway.

"Well, in that case," she looked immensely unsure of what she was about to say. "You could stay at my apartment, you know, until you get wherever it is you are going."

I blinked in confusion. That showed a huge level of trust, one that, frankly, confused me. She had recently been kidnapped by a human-supremacist paramilitary terrorist organization, and she was offering to let me - a human guinea pig for said organization who she had no idea of the mental state and potential danger of - stay in her home for an indefinite period of time. That seemed really weird to me . . .

. . . Or maybe I was just being paranoid and making a mountain out of a molehill.

"Not to be rude or anything," I said, carefully, "but . . . _why? _Why offer? You don't know me; for all you know, I could snap and start killing everything in sight."

Shara looked side-long at me. "And are you?"

After all the crap I'd been through, and with my luck?

"I honestly would not be surprised," I answered heavily, shrugging. "But I'd like to think that I'm stronger than that."

"Then I don't see any problem," Shara said. "I feel I can trust you."

I gaped. How the hell can she say she trusts me? Seriously, she met me less than a day ago, and she doesn't know a thing about me! Did she not hear what I said? And she's just inviting me into her home. This is freaking insane.

. . . Ah, fuck it.

". . . Fine," I groaned. "But I'm not likely to stay more than a day, hopefully."

Note to self: have Aegis hack into the extranet or Council files or whatever and see if Saren has been accused of being behind the Eden Prime attack. For that matter, find out if the Eden Prime attack has even happened yet.

"Well, then follow me." Shara said. "I live here on Tayseri Ward, and my apartment isn't that far from here, actually." She started walking off, gesturing for me to follow.

We caught a taxi to Shara's apartment. It was about a two minute ride, and then we were standing in front of a large skyscraper that stretched up, for what was probably two hundred feet, into the air. I whistled as I craned my neck looking up at the structure.

"Wow. You live here?" I asked, looking back over at Shara.

"Yes. I'm just one of a few hundred tenants though." she answered.

I nodded. Then a thought came to me; one that was rather unpleasant. "Uh, Shara, this might be a bad time to ask, but do you even have your key, or did that get taken from you when you got caught by Cerberus?"

Shara looked at me blankly for a moment, then said, "Oh hell. I should have remembered that." She stared at the ground momentarily, before perking up again. "Oh right, I just remembered. The building has a special service where all tenants give a sample of DNA to be scanned and a digital version stored in the building's database when they register, in the event that someone loses their electronic key due to a virus or losing their omnitool. I can just go to the front desk, have them confirm my identity, and I'll receive a new key, at the cost of a small, temporary increase in the rate next time I pay rent. Also, the lost key is deactivated, in the event that someone finds the key, so they can't get into the apartment."

I sighed in relief. "All right."

The replacement of Shara's key took very little time. In less than ten minutes she had gotten the new key, which had been uploaded to the omnitool we looted from Captain Bastard, we had gotten up the elevator to Shara's apartment's floor, and were standing in the living room of a fairly nice apartment.

"_Ask if she has an extranet connection that you can use," _Aegis piped up suddenly. I nodded unconsciously.

"Erm, Shara," I started, "do you have an extranet connection I can use?"

She nodded. "Sure, it's right over there." she pointed to the opposite corner of the room, where there was a terminal.

I nodded my thanks and walked over to the terminal, clicking onto my internal line. _"Now," _Aegis said again, _"hold out your left arm, and touch the terminal display. I need to interface with it through your omnitool." _I did so, and the omnitool sparked to life as I touched the terminal display, which became covered in streams of data reminiscent of the ones in _The Matrix_.

"_I have access,"_ Aegis declared. _"Is there anything you wish me to search for in particular?"_

I thought for a moment, before coming up with an idea. "Look through any messages either from or to an individual called Fist," I said, "Especially any between him and Saren Arterius, or any of his associates, and especially if the message is talking about a Quarian. Fist owns Chora's Den, if that helps any."

"_I know who Fist is, thank you," _Aegis sounded affronted. _"Give me a minute."_

There was silence for a moment, before Aegis spoke up again. _"I found something. A message from Fist to Saren, and an answering communique."_

"Can you show me?" I asked. Aegis didn't answer verbally, but instead brought up the two messages, superimposed over my HUD. It read:

_Sender: Fist_

_Subject: Information_

_To: Saren Arterius _

_I have some information for you. Some Quarian girl came into my office just a minute ago. Had damaging information on you and wanted to bargain with the Shadow Broker for protection in exchange for it. I told her I would set up a meeting, and thought you would want to know. The location where the Quarian will be is embedded with this message._

_Sender: Saren Arterius_

_Subject: Re: Information_

_To: Fist_

_You will be properly compensated for informing me of this development. I have men on the way to intercept the Quarian at the location you specified._

I finished reading both and swallowed, hard. "Aegis, when were these sent?"

"_The first was sent approximately fifteen minutes ago, and the second approximately nine minutes after that."_

Fuck. "Aegis, please tell me you got the location of the meet."

"_Yes, I did, and I am marking the location with a waypoint, as well as marking the quickest path there. I suggest you run."_

"Thanks Aegis." I hurriedly clicked back onto my external line. "Shara, sorry to rush, but I gotta run!" I ran over to the door and opened it.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Shara asked quizzically.

"Sorry, no time to explain, bye!" I said rapidly, leaving the apartment quickly and tearing off down the hallway, following the glowing blue line that marked the path Aegis had given me.

I just hope I don't get there too late . . .

**A/N: Once again, I am truly sorry for not getting this out sooner, but I am a terrible procrastinator. I spend way too much time reading fanfiction, rather than writing it.**

**On another note, I hope everyone had and/or is having a wonderful Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever other holiday you may celebrate. I myself had a wonderful Christmas; I had lots of tasty food, saw my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and got Skyrim. :D *thumbs-up***

**Hope you liked the chapter. Also, for those who consider Shara's behaviour to be unrealistic, given the circumstances, I wholeheartedly agree. However, this is fanfiction, so I can do what I want, and Shara is more or less basically a throw-away character at this point; she's not plot-important currently, and may not even show up again, depending on whether I think of something she can do. She's like Wilson or Jenkins, being that she's the temporary squad member in the start who's really only there to fill a gap, minus the whole 'being utterly useless and dying suddenly' thing.**

**Read and review!**


	6. A Letter

Greetings to the fine folk that moderate our site.

I, along with many, have been writing and posting on your fine site for years now, some of the better examples of up and coming writers out there are are now suddenly finding some of the stories we've come to love at risk of being removed without the chance to even rectify our errors.

For some, that means the permanent loss of a story. While I don't have anything that (I believe) violates your terms of use, there are those out there that are never able to recover a story in it's original form, this is something I find to be almost worthy of a legal action, as while we cannot claim ownership of a character, the stories are OURS and simply destroying them is something that is inexcusable.

It's quite easy to simply add an MA rating, additional filters or even a simple requirement for a free membership to read the stories presented here, and would cut down on hateful anonymous reviews and posts at the same time, so I have to question as to why such a thing, in all this time, simply wasn't added.

If you're worried about falsification of a registration then have an appropriate disclaimer and then there can be no dispute, you took your steps and the PARENTS didn't monitor their children, if that is even your concern. If it is more of a personal view or desire then please at least let people know and give them a chance to remove a story that you and yours find offensive, most people on the site are actually rather cordial when it comes to such requests.

While I cannot say for sure if this letter will even reach those that may be willing to listen, of if it's more akin to a wide spectrum purge in preparation for something bigger, please understand that you are going to be looseing a LARGE number of your writers, and thus your income from a lack of readers if there is not some level of action taken to help with this situation.

For those that may agree with this, please fell free to sign on and send this to the support server, maybe we can get some movement on this.

Psudocode_Samurai

Rocketman1728

dracohalo117

VFSNAKE

Agato the Venom Host

Jay Frost

SamCrow

Blood Brandy

Dusk666

Hisea Ori

The Dark Graven

BlackRevenant

Lord Orion Salazar Black

Sakusha Saelbu

Horocrux

socras01

Kumo no Makoto

Biskoff

Korraganitar the NightShadow

NightInk

Lazruth

ragnrock kyuubi

SpiritWriterXXX

Ace6151

FleeingReality

Harufu

Exiled crow

Slifer1988

Dee Laynter

Angeldoctor

Final Black Getsuga

ZamielRaizunto

Fenris187

blood enraged

arashiXnoXkami

Masane Amaha's King

Blood-Hawk-531

ShyHighFan

Skywalker T-65

Lightning Wolf-Jager

SpartanGoddess

saberstorm

Ragnarok Warrior

LSP Reviewer

Tich

OrochiX

HardHatRocker


	7. Chapter 6

**DISCLAIMER: I own no recognizable material, except within the confines of my sad, twisted little mind.**

**REVIEW RESPONSES:**

**douchiesnacks: Thanks, man.**

**Zero612: Thanks. I'm glad you think so.**

**JustAFerret: I like Shara too; my problem, however, my problem is that I haven't the foggiest clue on how to work her into the story. Shara was basically intended as a throwaway character that I could simply use as a catalyst for Julian (ergo, story!me) to mount his prison break. I honestly don't know what to do with her now, but at the same time I don't want to just abandon her character, since that would feel contrived. See my problem? Especially since I now don't know how I would get her back in the story without it, once again, seeming contrived. **

**And on the subject of Tali, if the speed of public transportation in ME is comparable to he elevators, Julian may just be better off running. Holy crap, long response is long.**

**Repeat16 and BrintonTwinz (I know you're the same people): Thanks.**

**Thousand Tailed Holy FlashFang: *****Too fat to move***** Thanks… Urg, I will never look at oranges or cookies the same way, ever again.**

**Classy Cynic: Thanks.**

**A/N: Heh, heh… Sorry I took so long to update. *****Dodges hail of knives, torches, pitchforks, axes, and other assorted sharp, pointy objects***** I unfortunately have a chronic case of Laziness Syndrome. However, this new change to the site, stating that stories with lemons or large amounts of violence can be deleted without warning – which I am frankly (pardon my language) really fucking pissed off about – has inspired me to write more. Also, to those of you who are sending me messages or reviews asking that I add your names to the petition, kindly do it yourself next time, and put it up on your own stories or PMs or profiles as well; it'll get around more that way.**

**Anyway, onward!**

I'm running down a thoroughfare, with the Markets in sight. Luckily, Shara's apartment was actually located within walking – or rather, running – distance of the Ward Markets, and I'm thanking pretty much every deity I can think of for that.

I slow down to a brisk walk when I get into the Markets, watching the holographic breadcrumb trail to see where to go. Damn me for not playing the first Mass Effect game; I could have gotten around much easier if I had.

The trail turned abruptly to one side, leading through a couple of doors and into a dimly red-lit alley. I duck in quickly, and blink owlishly for a moment before my eyes adjust to the lighting.

Well, this totally isn't a cliché clandestine meeting place at all. I can hear two people talking, and I draw my pistol as I head in their direction.

"-The Shadow Broker? Where's Fist?" That's Tali. I tighten my grip on the pistol, dropping to a crouch and taking aim as I spot the group at the foot of the stairs I am above of. Two salarians are standing off to one side, by some crates. A turian with a major "thug" vibe and facepaint that looks like a skull is standing out in the open, partially obscuring the smaller figure of Tali. Shit. I'll have to take out the salarians first; the way the turian's positioned, I could hit Tali by accident.

The turian runs a hand along Tali's helmet, and down her arm. Ew. This guy makes me feel like I need a shower, and I'm not even the subject of his… attentions. "They'll be here. Where's the evidence?" Dear God, even his _voice _is oily.

Tali slaps his hand away, and I cheer silently. "No way," she says, "The deal's off." At that, the turian backs off slightly, but the salarians both turn and start walking in her direction. Shit, this isn't good.

I decide to make my entrance. "Well, looks like I arrived just in the nick of time," I say, glaring down at the thugs from my higher position on top of the stairs and pointing my pistol directly at the turian's face. "Guess that makes me a big damn hero."

Tali dives off to one side, tossing a tech mine in the direction of the salarians, and ducks behind a crate. There's an explosion, and one of the two is thrown back and lands limply, like a marionette with its strings cut. At the same time, I charge down the stairs, bulling into the turian with a shoulder-check that throws him to the ground. I follow his collapse almost immediately, having lost my balance when I hit him.

We roll around on the ground, the turian swiping at me with his fingers curled like claws, catching me in the side of the head, hard, and dazing me momentarily, before I recover and punch him in the face; the punch lacks real force though, since I didn't manage to get any real torque because of the close proximity. Funnily enough, the collar on turian armour actually provides a great handle for grappling when fighting one in close quarters; I latch onto the collar quickly, and lunge forward to violently headbutt the turian in the face. He reels, head snapped back from the blow, and I take the opportunity to jam the pistol's barrel under his chin, ignoring the way I'm seeing stars. I squeeze the trigger twice, and indigo blue blood sprays from the back of the turian's head and he slumps bonelessly onto me, pinning me to the ground. My gut spasms uncomfortably as I look at the body, which is now leaking blue blood onto me; that's the eleventh person I've killed in the past twelve hours. I'm not sure if I'm happy or terrified that doing this will likely get easier with time.

As I struggle momentarily to move the – quite literally – dead weight off myself, cursing the lack of leverage I have, I see the remaining salarian moving toward me, pistol in hand and aimed at me. I shove the corpse off of myself and hurriedly bring my own pistol to bear in the thug's direction.

Suddenly, there's the roar of a shotgun firing, and the salarian bucks forward, stumbling from being shot in the back. He snaps around, pistol tracking, and I see Tali behind her crate, pumping the shotgun in her hands. She fires again, and the salarian collapses backward, his front spattered with viscous green blood.

Tali stands there, shotgun still readied, as I manage to shove the turian thug's corpse off of myself and stand up, retrieving my pistol from the ground, collapsing it, and putting it back on my hip. I put my hands up to appear less threatening. "Hi." I say. "Are you okay?" I'm looking noticeably down at her. Wow, either Tali's a fair bit shorter than she's shown in-game, which is possible, or I'mjust really tall. Possibly both.

"Who are you?" she demands, shotgun still pointed at me. "And who do you work for? Saren? The Shadow Broker?"

"Okay, first, if you could please put the shotgun down," I reply, eyeing the weapon in her hands. "I'm not here to kill you, like they were." I motion at the corpses. "My name's Julian, and no, I don't work for either Saren or the Broker. I'm just a good Samaritan." I paused, seeing her lowering the shotgun. "So, mind telling me your name, since I gave you mine?" I put my hand out to shake, before realizing the stupidity of the action and withdrawing it, before continuing, "And was there any particular reason why you decided that trusting Fist was a good idea?"

"My name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, though I would prefer just being called Tali. I- Doctor Michel told me he worked for the Shadow Broker. I was going to bargain for protection, using evidence that I found that proved that a turian Spectre named Saren was working with the Geth and attacked a human colony." Tali replies, looking away. She puts the shotgun away completely, and starts wringing her hands. "I wanted to meet with the Shadow Broker to be sure of it."

I shake my head. "Fist set you up. Everybody knows that the Shadow Broker never meets anyone in person. Nobody knows what they look like, or what their race is, even." Except for me, anyway. Fuck, that yahg was creepy. "I happened to overhear Fist talking to a certain Saren Arterius – I'm assuming he's the Spectre you're talking about – over a comm. channel in his office, and informing him of the location he sent you." A white lie, of course. It would be hard to explain why I, or rather, Aegis, was hacking into Fist's emails. "I imagine these guys" -I nudge the corpse of the turian thug with a boot- "were working for him."

"That _bosh'tet._" she hisses. "I _knew _I shouldn't have trusted him."

"Just wondering, Tali," I say after a moment, tilting my head slightly to one side curiously, "Why did you decide to give this information to the Shadow Broker? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the Council, or the Alliance?" That was always confusing to me, why Tali instead tried to bargain with the Shadow Broker for asylum, rather than the more obvious choices. Of course, it might have been explained in the first game, for all I know, but whatever. "And how'd you get in contact with Fist, anyway?"

"I tried," she replies, looking down at her hands, which she's wringing furiously. "At least, I tried with the Alliance. I went to the human embassy, and I asked to meet with your ambassador, but they called security on me and threw me out. I didn't go to the Council because I thought they might have been involved somehow with what Saren did."

Behind the expressionless helmet, I frown, and after a moment, reply. "I can understand your thinking with the second part, I suppose, since Spectres work directly for the Council; it's doubtful that they would be involved, though. I don't understand though, why you would get thrown out of-" I then remember why, and I grind my teeth angrily for a moment. "Oh, right; I remember now. The 'vagabonds and thieves' quarian stereotype, right?"

Tali seems to give me a dumbfounded look. "How do you know that?" she asks after a moment. "I thought humans didn't really know all that much about us." There's a short pause, before she adds, "Sorry, I didn't mean any offense."

"Nah, it's all right," I reply easily. "I do a lot of reading on the extranet and the Codex."

"Ah," she says in response. "As for how I met Fist, I was shot by someone working for Saren when I reached the Citadel. I managed to find a clinic down in the Lower Wards run by Doctor Michel, and she helped me. I mentioned that I had information on Saren, and she suggested I could take it to Fist, because she said he worked for the Broker, and that he owed her a favour. I didn't take her up on the offer until after getting thrown out of the embassy, though." She glances back up at me. "I met with Fist, and he sent me here, promising a meeting with the Shadow Broker. You know the rest. The thugs came, and then you came, and then- then I-"

With that she looks down at the shotgun-perforated salarian corpse. I can visibly see her body lock up, and hear what sounds like her breath hitching. Oh fuck; the adrenaline rush or whatever analogue quarians have must have worn off. She's probably never had to kill anyone before, and I'll bet she's in shock.

Stepping forward, I release my helmet seal and take it off, and lightly lay a hand on her shoulder, both of which are now shaking. "Hey, hey." I say, quietly, gently. "It's alright."

I wince inwardly. You dumbass! It's most definitely _not _all right! Why the hell did you say that?

"Sorry, what I mean is, are you okay?" I ask again, immediately regretting my word choice again. Damn it, I'm not good at comforting people! Especially after five years without being around normal people, rather than guards and a bunch of "doctors" whose idea of a good time was to torture me in cruel and unusual ways. "Uh, I mean, it's alright to feel this way after having to kill someone." I should _really _just shut the hell up.

"I… I… Oh Keelah…" Tali says haltingly. "I killed them… I've never killed anyone before." She sinks down to her knees, arms hugging her abdomen as she continues to stare at the body. I kneel down with her, and set my helmet down on the ground next to me; I feel it's better to perhaps just stay quiet and let her deal with it in her own way.

After a minute, she speaks up again. "Does it… get easier?" she asks. I wince, and shake my head slightly.

"I don't know, Tali." I reply, looking her in the eye sadly, doing my best not to look at the dead turian and to ignore the uncomfortable clenching feeling in my gut and throat, and the faint nausea. "I killed someone for the first time not even a day ago, so I wouldn't know." I pause, before adding, "If it's any consolation, it could have been worse." I'm not sure at all that this will help.

"H- How?" she asks.

"It could have been another quarian you had to kill." I answer back. "It could have been someone you knew. At least with you," I glance at the dead salarians, "you killed in self-defense. They would have killed you with no remorse, given the opportunity."

…And that probably didn't help. Fantastic. Way to go, Julian, you've officially made an ass of yourself.

"Sorry," I say. "I'm really not any good at this." I look away from Tali uncomfortably, and I drop my hand from her shoulder.

"Thanks." It's said quietly, but I catch it and my head snaps back to look at her again. Tali meets my gaze, eyes glowing through the purple fog of her visor. "Thank you." She repeats.

I blink in confusion, eyes wide. What? "Wha-" I begin, before something occurs to interrupt me.

"What happened here?" Female voice, tone suggests human or asari; unidentified, possible threat. In the two seconds it takes to process that thought, I snap up from my crouch and pivot in the direction the voice came from, spreading my stance out for better balance and keeping myself side-on to the source to present a smaller target. Simultaneously, my right hand shoots up to one of the rifles on my back; I draw the weapon quickly, and have it pressed into my shoulder and aimed almost before it finishes deploying.

Five possible hostiles; a turian, krogan, and three humans. No cover close enough to get behind, and they have the high ground. Helmet's on the ground, so no shield indicator. No grenades, and my weaponry's basically bog-standard. In short, I'm fucked if they attack.

I take a moment to actually look at them, and I calm down considerably at what I see. The krogan has battered-looking red armour, and a set of massive claw-mark scars on one side of his face; Wrex. The turian's got a _very _familiar-looking visor over one eye; Garrus… again. Two of the humans are recognizable as Ashley and Kaidan. The human out in front, a woman, is unfamiliar; she's got red hair, pale skin-tone and freckles, and her eyes are a strikingly vivid shade of green – all in all, she's actually quite attractive. As to her identity, she's wearing N7 armour, so there's only one person she could be, especially with most of the Mass Effect 1 ground team with her. Shepard…

Oh, thank God, I'm not screwed after all. Though the fact that all three of them have weapons pointed at me is unnerving.

"Who the hell are you, and what do you want?" I demand. Gotta keep up appearances, since I shouldn't know who everyone here is. Well, except Garrus, that is, and even so, I should only know him as "Officer Vakarian", if I were to remember him at all; it's been five years, after all. "Are you working for Saren?"

"I could say the same," Shepard says. "And no, I'm not working for Saren. I'm Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance. We're trying to get evidence that Saren is behind the Eden Prime attack, and Fist told us that he sent a quarian with the information here." Ah, I love being right. "And you are?"

"Julian." I answer. Shepard raises an eyebrow. The gun pointed at me doesn't waver.

"No last name?" she asks.

"Yes, I have a last name, it's just…" I feel awkward; my last name is slightly embarrassing. "Fine. It's Love. Julian Love." The last two sentences are muttered under my breath.

"Sorry, what was that?" Shepard asks.

"Julian Love!" I yell out, irritated. There's an audible silence for a moment, before I add, "You had better not laugh." I glance back, seeing Tali looking uncomfortable. "And this is Tali; she's the quarian Fist would've been talking about, I believe. I helped her out of the predicament she found herself in here."

Shepard nods once to me, and then gestures to everyone with her. They put away their weapons, and I do the same with my rifle, before scooping my helmet up off the grounds and cradling it under an arm. "All right, then. What happened here, exactly?"

"Well," I start, "I was in Chora's Den, and I eavesdropped on Fist talking to a Saren Arterius over a comm. He was talking about Tali, who had come to him asking to meet with the Shadow Broker and bargain for protection, in exchange for giving over evidence that Saren was responsible for the Eden Prime attack. Fist gave Saren the location he sent Tali to, and Saren was thanking him for being of help. I headed to that same location myself, since I had heard of the attack and wanted to do my best to help bring the perpetrator to justice, in any way I could, and if I could do so by protecting the person with said evidence and keeping it from Saren, so much the better.

"Anyway, then I got here, and found Tali about to be killed by these guys," –I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder, pointing at the dead thugs behind me. "And we killed them. Tali's okay," I look back at Tali, and she's still glancing at the dead salarians, "albeit somewhat in shock, and she still has the evidence. Neither of us were injured; so, yeah, not much else to it."

Tali pipes up. "Saren's thugs would have killed me if he hadn't come along." I scratch the back of my neck at this, feeling extremely awkward. I didn't do _that_ much.

Shepard nods, finally, before saying, "Well, I'm glad you weren't injured, Tali." She smiles. Hmm, I do believe we've got ourselves a Paragon Shepard here – sweet! Shepard then asks, "So you have evidence against Saren? Can you show it?"

Tali nods once. "Yes," she affirms, "But not here. We should find somewhere safer, less out in the open."

"Agreed," Shepard answers. "We should go to the human embassy. We can use Ambassador Udina's office; we won't be overheard there." Oh, great, venturing into the territory of the common Bureaucratic Asshole. Fun times will abound, I'm sure.

"Alright, let's go, then." Tali agrees. I clear my throat, not loudly, but enough to be noticeable.

"Uh, may I tag along?" I ask, hesitantly. Shepard looks at me for a moment, before nodding with a slight smile.

"I don't see why not." She answers. With that, she turns and starts walking away, motioning for us to follow, the rest of the group and myself trailing behind.

Oh, we're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz…

**A/N: Aaaaannnnd, CUT! **

**Remember, y'all know the drill – review! Reviews keep authors like myself happy, well fed, and motivated to keep writing. I want at, absolute LEAST, five to ten reviews from you, my readers. Seriously, even if you just leave a basic two-word 'Great job!' it would be enough.**

**Also, do you think I should change the story's rating to M? I do have a fairly considerable amount of cursing included, plus some kind of graphic combat, and I'm highly paranoid that the moderators (*cough cough*Overzealous! *cough*) will delete this story and/or my account otherwise.**

**Additionally, should this story, or Lone Wolf, for that matter, be taken down, I will start posting them on a different site, most likely DeviantArt. Should the unthinkable happen and my stories are deleted/ my account is deleted/whatever, come find me on DA and I will post my stories there. My DA name is exactly the same as my FFnet author name (Blood-Hawk-531).**

**Anywho, Blood-Hawk-531 out. Ja ne!**


End file.
